BISM Connection to Tabular Cube and Data Link Properties

You have a PowerPivot Gallery within SharePoint 2010. Within the gallery is a BISM connection that points to a Tabular cube. You attempt to use the BISM connection to open a new Excel workbook by clicking on the Excel icon.

After Excel opens you get a Data Link Properties dialog box.

Trying to modify the Data Link Properties in any way is futile. Entering a value for “Location:” won’t do anything, Analysis Services only runs with Windows NT Integrated security (so entering a a specific username and password is useless), and clicking the down arrow to select the initial catalog will yield a Data Link Error…

The following system error occurred: The application has failed to start because its side-by-side configuration is incorrect. Please see the application event log or use the command-line sxstrace.exe tool for more detail.

And once you click OK you get another lovely error…

Login failed. Catalog information cannot be retrieved.

Chances are you need to install the “Microsoft Analysis Services OLE DB Provider for Microsoft SQL Server 2012″ from the which is located here:

The Analysis Services OLE DB Provider is a COM component that software developers can use to create client-side applications that browse metadata and query data stored in Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Analysis Services. This provider implements both the OLE DB specification and the specification’s extensions for online analytical processing (OLAP) and data mining.